I set the cup aside, drew my blanket more tightly about me, and found a relatively comfortable position on the stone floor, having become something of an expert on the activity back in the crystal cave. The flickering flames mustered shadow armies behind my eyelids. The fire popped like a clash of arms; the air smelled of pitch.
I went away. Sleep is perhaps the only among life’s great pleasures which need not be of short duration. It filled me, and I drifted. How far and for how long, I cannot say.
Nor can I say what it was that roused me. I know only that I was somewhere else and the next moment I had returned. My position had changed slightly, my toes were cold, and I felt that I was no longer alone. I kept my eyes closed, and did not alter my breathing pattern. It could be that Ghost had simply decided to look in on me. It could also be that something was testing my wards.
I raised my eyelids but the smallest distance, peering outward and upward through a screen of eyelashes. A small misshaped figure stood outside the cave mouth, the fire’s remaining glow faintly illuminating his strangely familiar face. There was something of myself in those features and something of my father.
“Merlin,” he said softly. “Come awake now. You’ve places to go and things to do.”
I opened my eyes wide and stared. He fitted a certain description…
Frakir throbbed, and I stroked her still.
“Dworkin…?” I said.
He chuckled.
“You’ve named me,” he replied.
He paced, from one side of the cave mouth to the other, occasionally pausing to extend a hand partway toward me. Each time he hesitated and drew it back.
“What is it?” I asked. “What’s the matter? Why are you here?”
“I’ve come to fetch you back to the journey you abandoned.”
“And what journey might that be?”
“Your search for the lady somewhere astray who walked the Pattern t’other day “
“Coral? You know where she is?”
He raised his hand, lowered it, gnashed his teeth.
“Coral? Is that her name? Let me in. We must discuss her.”
“We seem to be talking just fine the way we are.”
“Have you no respect for an ancestor?”
“I do. But I also have a shapeshifting brother who’d like to mount my head and hang it on the wall of his den. And he might just be able to do it real quick if I give him half a chance.” I sat up and rubbed my eyes, my wits finishing the job of reassembling themselves. “So where’s Coral?”
“Come. I will show you the way,” he said, reaching forward. This time his hand passed my ward and was immediately outlined in fire. He did not seem to notice. His eyes were a pair of dark stars, drawing me to my feet, pulling me toward him. His hand began to melt. The flesh ran and dripped away like wax. There were no bones within, but rather an odd geometry-as if someone had sketched a hand quickly in a three-dimensional medium, then molded some fleshlike cover for it. “Take my hand.”
I found myself raising my hand against my will, reaching toward the fingerlike curves, the swirls of the knuckles. He chuckled again. I could feel the force that drew me. I wondered what would happen if I took hold of that strange hand in a special way.
So I summoned the Sign of the Logrus and sent it on ahead to do my hand-clasping for me.
This may not have been my best choice of actions. I was momentarily blinded by the brilliant, sizzling flash that followed. When my vision cleared, I saw that Dworkin was gone. A quick check showed that my wards still held. I perked up the fire with a short, simple spell, noted that my coffee cup was half full, and warmed its tepid contents with an abbreviated version of the same rendering. I reshrouded myself then, settled, and sipped. Analyze as I might, I couldn’t figure what had just happened.
I knew of no one who had seen the half mad demiurge in years, though according to my father’s tale, Dworkin’s mind should have been largely mended whet Oberon repaired the Pattern. If it had really been Jurt, seeking to trick his way into my presence and finish me off, it was an odd choice of form for him to assume. Come to think of it, I wasn’t at all certain that Jurt even knew what Dworkin looked like. I debated the wisdom of calling for Ghostwheel to solicit an inhuman opinion on the matter. Before I could decide, however, the stars beyond the cave mouth were occulted by another figure, much larger than Dworkin’s-heroically proportioned even.